Confessions of a displaced, pre-1968 Democrat.

03/30/2014

Finding A Long-Term Solution To The Russian Situation

What is the correct response of the United States to Vladimir Putin’s aggressiveness in Russia? I’ve been turning thoughts over in my mind, and have watched the panel discussions on Chris Wallace’s Sunday morning show on Fox, and am still ambivalent. Here are a few thoughts…

*I don’t want any part of committing troops. I agree with a comment President Obama made earlier this week when he said that Russia is a regional superpower. The implication, which I agree with, is that this means Russia is not a direct threat to the survival of the United States. And that is ultimately the bottom line.

*But there are other facets of this where I think the president is being naïve. Russia is only a regional superpower right now, but what if they keep moving, and then formulate a stronger alliance with China, who happens to own a large chunk of the U.S. debt? Suddenly it’s a whole new ballgame and Obama has to be thinking ahead of the curve, not along with it.

*The moral implications are troubling. What if the people of Ukraine and Georgia don’t want to be annexed by Russia (and I presume they don’t). Does the United States have any obligation to help? Remember, an obligation to help presupposes the ability to do.

One side of this says the U.S. can easily send military aid—not troops, but weapons and intel. I’m sympathetic to this, as it revives the old Reagan Doctrine, wherein the United States provided aid to countries that wanted to fight off Soviet Communism.

But the flip side goes back to the possibility of a Russia-China alliance, and that the United States might be more vulnerable than we realize. In short, it might not be prudent to go traipsing all over the world and intervening, even for a good cause. The Catholic Church’s teaching on Just War doctrine requires that both—morality and prudence—be present for a cause to be truly just.

*I know the big push is for economic sanctions, but you’re going to have a hard time selling me on the idea that Western Europe will go along with anything significant, at least for any real length of time. These are governments more focused on their trade relationships. They couldn’t even be persuaded to risk their contracts in Iraq for the sake of stronger sanctions. What makes us think they’ll resist in Russia?

This has big-picture implications, because the United States has been locked, for far too long, into Cold War thinking regarding our “European allies.” How strong of allies are they? And in the short-term, if the continent right on Russia’s west border doesn’t want to go all in to stop Putin, why should the United States care? We’re the ones with a couple oceans between us and Russia.

My view is that we focus on the long-term threats. The first is the size of our debt, which leaves us under partial control by China, and therefore to an alliance with Russia. This is the internal problem that’s sapping us, and what’s true of individuals is also true of nations—our biggest threats come from inside.

The second area to focus on is start asking some serious questions about how far United States’ influence must extend and what the interests we’re truly willing to sacrifice for are. For Republicans, this means, moving past the notion that we’re going to use our might to spread democracy through the world. For the Democrats, it means accepting that we might need to tell Western Europe they need to handle their own security—and that means European audiences might no longer greet the American president like a rock star.

Cut the debt, reassess our interests and be willing to tick some people off to sharpen our foreign policy focus. At a certain point, what will be will be, and we can’t do everything.